


Unspoken

by JediDryad



Series: Unresolved - a Counterpressure Sequel Series [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types
Genre: Don't. I don't know how to answer that, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Unresolved Sexual Tension, ask me if i care, friendship runs deep, not quite apologies, so far to go, the lecture means i love you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-05
Updated: 2019-09-05
Packaged: 2020-10-10 06:39:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20523602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JediDryad/pseuds/JediDryad
Summary: A lack of sleep can make one slow moving, emotionally wrought, and generally miserable. A lack of sleep brought on by endless visions of the death of an ex-friend and lover, can make one do wild things, like track him down and get stuck with him in his bestie’s broken down ship. Sheer torture.Filling in that gap at the end of The New Rebellion where Mara shows up with some Ysalimiri, burns her hands, and then is never mentioned again.This story is an extended update of the story Cabin Fever which I published on fanfiction.net a long long time ago - oh so long ago. I tried very hard to make it sexy, but it kept going in a different direction, so I wrote Uncovered in order to give us all the steamy night we deserved, before going for the slightest touch of reconciliation.But please don’t misunderstand, there’s no real resolution. These two will be lucky if they get their acts together for VOTF.





	Unspoken

**Author's Note:**

  * For [frangipani](https://archiveofourown.org/users/frangipani/gifts).

~from The New Rebellion~  
Then she turned around. Han was behind her, watching her.  
"I love you Princess," he said softly.  
She launched herself into his arms and pulled him close. "I know," she whispered, "I know."  
~end excerpt~

Mara was breathing a little more heavily than she wanted to be as she came out of the alley well behind Solo and the Wookiee. The ysalimiri meant she couldn’t suppress the pain in her hands. It felt like they were still on fire.

She watched Han and Leia embrace under the eye of a giant fluffy monstrosity that no one else seemed to notice. For a brief moment, she wondered if she were hallucinating until Luke walked over and scratched its paw affectionately. She let out her breath. A friend then, for now at least.

She briefly wondered where the ysalimiri had gotten to since she could still feel their effects, but that idle thought was squelched by the realization that the entire back of Luke’s flight suit had been burnt away. His own back was a mess of oozing welts and scabs and charred pieces of fabric. How was he even standing with burns like that? 

Before she knew what she was doing, she found herself crossing the square towards him.

He turned to face her and staggered slightly as she came within range.

"Mara?"

"Easy Skywalker," she said, catching him firmly by the shoulder and helping him recover his balance. She fought not to react to the fact that the remains of his flightsuit felt like sandpaper against her burnt palms.

"What are you doing here?"

She ignored his question in favour of more practical matters. There was a body a few steps away. Sliding her blaster out of her sleeve and cringing at the warmth of the metal, she walked over to the corpse of Kueller. Skywalker had a bad habit of leaving enemies alive to shoot him again when he wasn’t looking.

She felt her eyes narrow as she saw Luke had placed the kid’s fright mask over his chest like some sort of tribute. Nope, terrorists who try to blow up the senate hall don’t get to be honoured as worthy adversaries. She kicked the mask off his chest and scrutinized the fatal blaster burns Leia had delivered.

She was an awfully good shot for an Alderaanian, Mara realized. If she were in a firefight, she could think of worse people to be with than Leia Organa Solo. 

Kueller was definitely dead. 

She reholstered her blaster gingerly and turned to examine Luke with just as much scrutiny.

He was a mess. Besides his back, he was pale as a sheet, a mess of scratches, burns and obvious shrapnel fragments all over his face and body. What was left of his flight suit hung on him in tatters and the expression on his face suggested he was feeling worse than he looked.

"What have you been doing to yourself now?" she asked, weary and exasperated.

"Why are you here?" he repeated, clearly unwilling to change the topic.

Apparently her show of glaring disrespect for the dead wasn’t horrifying enough to distract him from the question she did not want to answer.

_ I’m here because the Force has been screaming at me for the past month and the only thing that seemed to placate the mental alarm was to come see you. _

No, that answer was not an option.

"Someone had to bring the ysalimiri."

She could tell Luke wasn’t really buying it. Karrde could have sent anyone and she didn’t even work for him these days. She tried not to think of the other times the Force had sent her into Skywalker’s orbit. This was becoming a pattern she did not like. 

"Why would you have - "

"Come on," she interrupted. There would be no further discussion on her motivation.

"You need a med kit - actually, you need a bacta tank. Surprised the Falcon doesn’t have one yet."

“I’ll suggest it to Han, ” Luke said drily. 

He thought this was a time to be funny?

“Joke all you like, you can’t see your back. What the kriff have you been doing?”

“My X-wing caught fire.”

She snapped her mouth shut afraid she would otherwise lose control of it completely. The dreams she’d been having of Luke burning alive, they hadn’t been metaphorical. She should have come sooner.

She closed her eyes as the images replayed behind her eyelids, and fought to pull herself together.

“Of course it did.” she muttered adding a vicious Huttese expression under her breath.

He smothered a grin poorly. Seriously? There was nothing to be amused about.

“Come on.” she snapped, turning away from him, “ You’re the same colour as dress uniform and I bet you’re three levels past dehydrated.”

"Yeah, I guess I am a little thirsty." Luke admitted trailing behind her as she walked towards the Falcon.

A little thirsty? His lips were so cracked there could be animals living in the jagged crevices. 

“The things I could have been using my talents for other than plotting your murder. The Empire had no idea how to allocate resources.” she muttered to herself. She was pretty sure Luke was smiling again and she couldn’t figure out whether that pleased or infuriated her. That definitely infuriated her.

When they got to the Falcon, it became clear they would not be taking off any time soon. The hits the ship took on the way into the system needed to be repaired before they could leave, not to mention the quad gun that had blown up in Mara’s hands.

She hissed silently as she carefully unclenched her burnt fingers. They felt a bit better now that she could feel the Force again, but still smarted if she wasn’t careful.

“This,” she thought to herself, “is an effective substitute for torture.”

Here she was stuck on windswept planet with the political stability of a sand burrower colony, in a death trap of a ship, and all because she’d let Karrde talk her into bringing the kriffing ysalimiri to help Skywalker. Except, no, she hadn’t let him talk her into it. After two weeks of nightmares and a deep sense of foreboding, she’d rearranged her schedule, cancelled a couple of key deliveries, and practically begged Karrde to let her take this job. He might have even figured out that’s what she was doing.

Leia had been swiftly spirited out of there by the New Republic forces but that hadn’t really been an option for Mara, and Karrde had been decidedly unsympathetic to her plight.

He’d told her she needed a vacation anyway.

Stupid Force nightmares. 

Kriffing danger sense.

The fact that the universe apparently wanted her here did not make her particularly cheerful about doing its bidding. Who wants to follow orders from a Force that leaves you stuck playing interminable rounds of holochess with Luke Skywalker?

"Your turn," Luke said, shifting in his seat.

She saw him wince as his back brushed against the wall. Angry red welts crept over his bare shoulders and peeked out around his ribs.

"You need more salve don't you?" she said suspiciously. After two days in and out of healing trances, the burns on his back were more superficial than they had been, but nowhere near healed. Luke, of course, had rejected all offers of painkillers.

"No, I'm fine," he said dismissively. Then he shifted again and gritted his teeth, quickly sucking in air.

"Right," she muttered, "move over."

For a moment, he looked like he might argue with her, but then he nodded and shifted over to make room for her on the bench.

Grabbing the tube of salve, she slid in beside him and unscrewed the cap. She began applying it generously to the large burns on his back. The jedi was lucky to be sitting there. She hoped he realized that.

“You seem angry,” he said into the silence.

“Out of my head, Skywalker.” she snapped confirming his impressions.

“I’m not in your head,” he sounded a little amused, “you’re practically steaming. Ghent would know you were angry.”

Ghent rarely noticed anything that wasn’t a particularly notable line of code.

“Okay, so I’m angry,” she grumbled, “I don’t want to be here. I’ve got a trade schedule to keep. What of it?”

“Anger is of the darkside.”

“You concerned I’m going to build a terrorist cell to attack the New Republic like your prized pupil did?”

Luke spun around, clearly horrified, “No!”

“Because I can assure you I’d be a damn sight better at it than he was.”

Something flared in Luke’s eyes.

“I’m sure you would.”

“And another thing,” she snarled, “Why the kriff did you let this Dolph kid get so far away from you in the first place? You’re so unwilling to stop these rogue students before they destroy things. Why won’t you fight back until you’ve been nearly immolated alive by someone?”

“You were worried about me?”

She turned away and put the cap back on the tube.

“I’m worried about the galaxy.”

Mara rubbed the rest of the salve into her hands. Her own burns were still bothering her. It was not helping her mood.

“How are your hands?” Luke asked. It did not seem like an innocent subject change.

“Fine,” she grumbled.

“They look pretty red and raw to me.”

“Seen your back lately?” she shot back.

“No,” His tongue seemed to be firmly planted in his cheek.

Mara grimaced. It had been a ridiculous retort.

“Here, let me.”

He reached over and took her hands in his. Almost instantly, she could feel the residual heat flow out of her skin. She looked down as he ran his fingers along her palms and then traced her fingers with his own. The redness started to fade before her eyes.

His touch was soft. It made her remember things she’d been trying to forget.

She closed her eyes and her breath caught as he leaned in and pressed his forehead to hers.

“You’re wasting your energy.” she said quietly into the silence, “You should be focussed on your own healing.”

He shook his head against hers.

“My back will be fine. You need your hands.”

She pulled back to argue and his lips were on hers. The kiss was sweet, and utterly unlike anything they had shared before. It swept through her like a balm, drawing out her anger and fears like he’d drawn the heat from her hands. What was he doing?

Luke let go of her now pain-free fingers and gently slid his across her face. She could feel her heart pounding in her chest. There was something in his tenderness that was almost unbearable. The only thing worse would be for it to stop.

Dimly, she was aware she was almost in his lap as he gently stroked her hair. Barely, she recognized the sound of her own breathing as his mouth moved against hers, lips seeking an opening.

She slid her arms around his neck and he winced noticeably as she came up with a handful of sticky salve. 

The return to reality was swift.

“Skywalker,” she breathed, pulling back and glaring at him.“You’re starting something you can’t finish.”

Luke’s chest was heaving as a cocky grin slid onto his face, “What makes you think I can’t finish it?”

She pushed him lightly against the bulkhead and he let out a whimper of pain as his back flared.

“You’re a delusional idiot,” she snapped. 

Pointedly, she wiped her hands down his front leaving a trail of salve from his shoulders to his ribs. Even this frustrated move made her heart beat faster.  
She lightly shoved him away and sprang to her feet. In an instant, she was out the door, leaving Luke alone with the holoboard. 

Moving faster than she really wanted to be, fast enough that an observer might think she was in a hurry, she stormed down the ramp out of the Falcon trying to wrangle her emotions. 

Why did she get herself into these messes? Why did Luke Skywalker always throw a hydrospanner in her path?

She heard a bang and caught sight of Han down near the aft sensors. Seizing upon an excuse for being out there to begin with, she called out to him.

“Hey, Solo.”

He looked up at her.

"Any word on when we can get out of here?"

Frustration showed in his expression and she swore inwardly. Of course she’d just asked the wrong question.

"I dunno," he snarled, "maybe after Chewie finally gets the wires on the quad lasers attached right."

An equally angry growl sounded from somewhere just out of sight and Mara winced. Her grasp of Shryiiwook extended no further than the basic vulgarities muttered by smugglers and pirates. 

She'd understood every word Chewbacca had spoken.

"Yeah, well get it right!"

More growls ensued, and a heavy, no doubt critical, piece of durasteel bounced off the hull and landed at Han's feet.

"Well that's just great. So the 'mechanically adept' Wookie can't tell green from blue. Heh, bet you can't tell green from red either. That's why you've got so many traffic violations."

With that, Chewie's face appeared over the side of the ship and he made a series of universally insulting gestures.

"Listen to me you furry - "

"No, you listen to me!" Mara interrupted, her blaster pointed at Solo. It was set for stun but he didn't need to know that, "Either you two oafs get this piece of junk fixed and get us off this Force-foresaken rock or this ship's going to need a new captain because all you'll be capable of is lying very still."

Han watched her closely, defiant nature clearly warring with prudence. Mara advanced, her blaster unwavering although she wasn’t really sure what exactly she was threatening to do. She knew better than to shoot the captain of the ship that would get her off planet, especially when the Captain's Wookie first mate was a hydrospanner's throw away, but this whole repairs thing was taking kriffing forever. She could only be grounded for so long.

Solo flashed a crooked grin.

"We'll be out of here by tomorrow morning."

“I’m counting on it.” Mara replied re-holstering her blaster. She let out a long breath as she stormed away, thoroughly embarrassed with herself. 

Was it her imagination, or did Chewbacca's snorts sound like he was stifling laughter?

She knew there was a reason she’d been staying away from this crowd. They completely messed with her equilibrium. She needed to be on some other planet entirely, by herself, in her ship with the controls in her hands.

After a walk around the nearby community that just left her depressed with the state of the galaxy, she wandered back to the Falcon and found a reasonably climbable route to the top of the ship.  
She wound up perched near the sensor array watching the sky, almost meditating. Slowly she watched the blue of the afternoon drift into dusk and the stars came out. Breathing deeply, she tried to relax and shake off the claustrophobia of this whole experience. After a couple of hours, she thought it might be working.

“Jade?”

Solo appeared over the edge of the ship.

“I was hoping to lock up for the night. You sleeping out here?”

“No, I suppose not.” she replied climbing to her feet and walking over to him.

“Good view of the stars?”

“Not bad. The observation deck’s a disaster though.”

“Nice.” he muttered, “Incidentally, you’re not great company these days, Jade”

“When was I ever good company?”

“I dunno, the kid always seemed to enjoy having you around.”

“You trust his judgement?”

Catching the edge in her tone, he replied with sincerity.

“I usually do, actually. You don’t?”

“About some stuff, I guess. Other stuff…”

“Force stuff?”

“You have doubts too?”

“He says he’s got it under control.”

Mara grunted. Solo’s loyalty to his brother-in-law was unimpeachable.

“Anyway, the quad laser is fixed and the rest is patched. We have clearance to leave at the earliest slot. For the record, we were on track for that even before you shoved your blaster in my face.”

“It was set for stun.”

“Oh, well that’s a great improvement.”

Mara felt her face warm and was sure she was visibly blushing.

“Yeah, sorry for threatening you. I’ve definitely been suffering from cabin fever.”

“An apology from Mara Jade?”

“Don’t get used to it, Solo.”

“Oh I won’t, I’m going to inscribe this event on a wall somewhere. What’s the date again?”

She chuckled at that and followed him down to the ground.

**

Mara had been asleep for about an hour and a half when she suddenly shot up in bed. Something was bad bad bad! In her initial disorientation, she thought it was her danger sense that had woken her and she reached for her blaster. Then she pulled her hand back as she realized that the impressions of flames and agony and loss she was sensing were not current, and not hers.

Luke was having a nightmare.

Sighing, she got to her feet and pulled her flight jacket on over her sleep shift. Then she shuffled to the cabin next to hers.

“Skywalker?” she whispered as she opened the door. She didn’t want to risk surprising a Jedi Master, 

“Skywalker?”

There was no response except a slight moan from his bunk.

“Luke,” she repeated, kneeling next to his bed and shaking his shoulder slightly, careful to avoid the burns, “wake up. You’re having a bad dream.”

His blue eyes flickered open and seemed to take a long time to focus on her in the semi-darkness.

“Mara,” he mumbled, “What are you doing in here?”

“You woke me up.” she rebuked.

He yawned, “Sorry, was I loud?”

“Sort of,” she gestured to her head by way of explanation and Luke seemed to wilt a little.

“Sorry,” he mumbled again.

“Han said you were doing another healing trance.”

“That was the goal,” Luke sat up, carefully pulling his blanket around him and running a hand absently through his hair.

Mara got to her feet and put a bit of distance between them.

“But, in a trance, I shouldn’t have been able to sense anything.”

He closed his eyes and let out a long breath.

“They’re not working all that well right now.”

“Which part?”

“The staying in the trance part.”

His expression was equal parts frustration and defeat.

“I do all my normal preparation, draw the Force in, and I get down there, but something triggers my sense of something wrong and throws me out again.”

Mara stood there, uncertain what to say. Even before he was the all powerful jedi master, Luke had never seemed to struggle with calm and focus.

“So, what?” Mara said, “You’re afraid to go to sleep?”

The sudden flash of vulnerability in his eyes silenced any snide remarks that had been forming.

“My brain keeps replaying the crash and the flames. It seems to be tricking my Force sense into believing it’s about to happen again.”

He shrugged broadly.

“It’s why this whole thing is taking so long to heal. I keep getting bounced out.”

Of course, a perfectly normal reaction to what had happened. Any human would have experienced that. 

And any human who didn’t think he should be beyond such things wouldn’t have waited so long to confide in someone about it.

Mara looked at him for a moment, trying to figure out if there was anything useful to be said.

Finally she walked to the shelf next to the bunk and grabbed one of the scratchy grey military blankets stacked there. Then she released the mag-grav lever on the only chair in the room  
and drew it over to the bunk.

She could feel Luke’s eyes on her, and she realized that she probably looked more than a little ridiculous with her flight jacket over her white sleep shift. Whatever. Wake her up in the middle of the night and you get what you get.

She plunked herself down in the chair, stretched her legs out on to the edge of the bunk, and threw the blanket over her bottom half.

“Okay, I’ll stay.”

“You’ll, what?” Luke was perplexed.

“What, my resume isn’t good enough for your security needs?”

“Security?” Luke was at a loss.

“Absolutely. If the most powerful jedi in the galaxy is sensing something wrong that’s keeping him from getting healing he needs, that’s a security threat to take seriously. So get yourself back in a trance and let me take watch for you.”

“You would do that?” Luke sounded far too surprised for the gratitude to feel genuine to Mara.

“Go to sleep, Skywalker.” she replied dismissively.

She refused to analyse the expression on his face as he nodded at her and settled back down onto his stomach. After a moment, he closed his eyes. She could sense him draw the Force around himself and disappear behind the curtain.

Good.

Mara prided herself on her ability to adapt, but the prospect of staying awake for an unknown length of time eventually began to feel beyond her. The reality was that between the nightmares and her burned hands, the paltry hour and a half Skywalker had shocked her out of was the first decent sleep she’d had in over three weeks, and she hadn’t walked into here prepared to take watch. But she’d promised Luke she would and Mara Jade kept her word. It was a matter of honour.

Sleep rarely cares about honour. 

After 3 and a half hours of studiously keeping her eyes open, she drifted into unconsciousness, uncomfortable chair notwithstanding.

“Mara?”

Luke’s voice sounded like it was far away, but she could feel his presence hovering near her right arm.

She grunted. Her eyes refused to open. Her body wanted to sleep. She could feel his hand on hers. A brief squeeze.

“Thank you.” His murmur was heartfelt enough she wished she were more awake so she could come up with a decent comeback.

Her eyes weren’t open enough to roll them.

“Crummy bodyguard fell asleep.” she mumbled.

“No, it was perfect,” he whispered. There was a pause and then,

“The trance worked.”

She might have nodded. She wasn’t sure.

After a moment, or an hour - it was hard to tell, - he tugged at her arm, fingers intertwining with hers.

“Come sleep,” Luke whispered.

Some small slice of her brain fought valiantly to convince her that she should reject this offer. Memories of their last encounter flashed through her along with the reminder that the feelings of familiarity and safety he was offering were not to be trusted.

For whatever reason, the warnings didn’t have any power at the moment. Sleep sounded good. Luke sounded nice. And so she let him draw her into the narrow bunk next to him. He slid his arms around her and tucked her in against him. It was wonderful to lie down. She drifted in Luke’s warmth and steady breathing. It felt normal and she was too tired to analyse that.

“Wait. Your back?” she muttered feeling like she should already know the answer to that one.

“All better,” he answered, “You can inspect it in the morning.”

“Hmmph,” she grunted, slurring her speech significantly, “P’thetic. Once stayed awake... six days.” Her words were punctuated with a jaw cracking yawn.

Luke chuckled. She felt the vibrations against her shoulder as he dropped a light kiss on her cheek.

“Yeah, but you were taking those horrible stim pills then.”

“Worked.”

“They made you very cranky.”

“Tha’ was you.”

He chuckled again and pulled her in tighter.

So warm. She felt herself drifting.

“Thanks for keeping me safe,”

His words barely registered as sleep settled over her.

**

Mara woke up to a loud metallic crash and instantly noticed they were in the air - hyperspace if the flickers from the small windows could be trusted - and she was alone.

The crash, she realized was the chair she’d released the night before. She’d forgotten to anchor it. Another sign she hadn’t been getting enough sleep. Solo must have gotten his slot on time and Luke had snuck out and let her sleep in. Definitely one of his smarter choices.

Hopefully he’d keep everyone well enough away from the cabins until she showed up. She didn’t need a witness to her little walk of shame.

She outright cringed as she remembered being drawn into the warmth of his arms like it made some sort of sense for her to be there. The fact that she also felt more rested than she had in awhile did not help. Kriffing Skywalker. 

Mara pushed the grey blanket back and snuck back to her cabin.


End file.
